Fiona Passantino — Why HR Must Lead AI Integration: AI Literacy, Training & the Human-Led Roadmap
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Why should AI integration be owned by HR instead of IT?
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Today's guest is the award winning author of three comic books for executives on AI and human working life. And her new book is AI Powered Leader. It is a pleasure to welcome to Inside Learning Fiona Pasantino. You're very welcome to the show.
Thank you, Aiden. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here.
Great to have you on the show and I highly recommend and we're gonna link to your website the brilliant cartoons that you have, the brilliant comics that you have, and you create yourself. But the book, oh my, you pack in so much in here. AI literacy, leadership lag, data governance, responsible AI, compliance, training, workflows, rags, small language of models, AI at scale and So so much more, including the future of human leadership. But I thought for this show, for the Inside Learning Podcast, maybe we'll start with HR, because HR is an afterthought when it comes to AI integration. It's taught a lot as owned by IT in some organizations. Sometimes it's marketing. Sometimes it's the digital side of the building, but it really is, as you say in the book, has to be a human led experience.
Yes, I make the case in the book that the owner of the AI employee experience. So you we talk about employee experience. I spent many, many years in HR. And my job was always helping and supporting training the working community. And HR is in charge of managing people's joy, happiness, inspiration, whether they have the tools that they need to manage the job. And if people are stressed out or overworked or they don't have the tools that they need, then HR feels it. And they are the ones that have to, you know, meet the needs of the working community. And there is no other place for an AI integration than within HR. Because what I see a lot of times that does not work is that leaders will look at something like AI and they'll say, Oh, it's tech, it's a tool.
Well, IT guys Do AI.
How does treating AI as a new employee change the adoption strategy?
Go and do AI, integrate stuff, get some tools, and call us when you're done. Because leaders don't actually do the work. They delegate, which is their job. They should do that. But because they don't do the work, they're not the ones experimenting and using the tools. Because everybody who experiments and uses the tools understands that it's not a tool in the classic sense. It's more resembles a new kind of employee. So therefore that is why it falls more heavily under HR than under IT and tech. So what what happens generally is leadership will say, okay. IT guys, check out the tools, do AI. And then the IT guys will try to teach people how to use these tools. They don't really have a lot of governance support.
They don't have rules of the road. Leaders don't give them enough instruction as to what's okay and what's not, because they don't understand them. They don't know what it is. And Then he They'll put on maybe a couple of workshops of an hour, not understanding how to give a training, right? Which HR does. And then people look at them and they're like And of course they don't because They're being trained by people who are not trainers. expected to use a tool that that they don't understand what's in it for me. There are no rules of the road. And that doesn't get adopted. And then leaders will say, Oh, resistance. Well Actually not. HR knows how to deal with this. HR knows how to deal with change management and transformation and understands that people need training, they need governance, they need rules, and they need kind of like a change strategy to meet the needs of this massive transformation.
I love that you said that because most transformation efforts fail, as we know. And th they don't fail because it's the wrong strategy or the wrong tool. It's usually the human resistance. And as you say, it often comes from a lack of education or fear. And that manifests as resistance.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why should AI integration be owned by HR instead of IT?
0:00–2:33
2
How does treating AI as a new employee change the adoption strategy?
2:33–6:28
3
What leadership mistakes cause AI roll‑outs to stall as “resistance”?
6:28–10:10
4
How does the EU AI Act make AI literacy and governance a legal requirement?
10:10–14:03
5
Which employee groups need extra AI training and why?
14:03–18:26
6
How can HR prevent a split between “AI people” and “analog people”?
18:26–22:23
7
What is the five‑stage “bird” roadmap from ostrich to eagle?
22:23–25:42